Rule number one? "Do not taste hungry," said Brown. "Because if you're hungry when you sit down at this table, whatever they give you first will taste the best. Make sure you snack before you come to the table." Rule number two? "Taste after everybody else tastes," said Brown. "While you're eating, the judges will be making comments that you can disagree with, and that always makes you look smarter."

If you watched last night's penultimate episode of Food Network's 'The Next Iron Chef,' you know that the competition was intense.

In fact, it was such a tight race that it surprising to see which two chefs were sent home. Both made just the slightest missteps in their nearly flawless, high-end, luxury dishes.

The theme of the night was seduction, and the final four were asked to make not only their food sexy, but a cocktail, too. The first challenge was creating a seductive cocktail with a snack food to complement the drink.

If you take your remote control and surf on over to Fine Living Network on May 31, well, it won't be there. Instead, you're going to see The Cooking Channel, Food Network's new channel devoted to food (of course), drinks, and travel. They've announced the lineup for the network's debut, and while some of the shows seem like something we could see on the parent network, there's enough quirky new stuff to grab your attention.

Some are using the word "edgy" to describe the new channel too, but unless they're breaking the necks of live chickens right on television, this is still just a food channel. Oh, wait, they actually are going to break chicken necks! Alrighty.

After the jump, my picks for the four shows that look the most interesting, as well as a quick rundown on what else we're going to see on the new channel.

I'm sort of a cooking show geek. I can watch Martha Stewart bake a pie or Alton Brown explain how a convection oven works any time of the day, even two in the morning. And it's not like I just started watching cooking shows in the past several years because it was hip to do so, I've been watching them since I was a kid. I was rather addicted to The French Chef and The Galloping Gourmet when I was younger.

When you're a cable network and you're only reaching 55 million households and want to reach twice that amount, what do you do? If you're Scripps Networks, you rebrand the channel and give it a new name. That's why Fine Living will become the Cooking Channel in 2010.

The way I see this, since Scripps owns the Food Network, the Cooking Channel will be sort of a Food Network annex. Food Network 2.0. Food Network, Two. In actuality, a lot of the programming on Fine Living now is connected to Food Network. Old Iron Chef episodes, Emeril LaGasse and Mario Batali and Wolfgang Puck ... all cooking shows that were once on Food Network.

Now that it's going to drop the Fine Living angle and concentrate on cooking, all the overflow from Food Network will have somewhere to go.

One of the best parts of the TV Critics' Press Tour is the over-the-top evening parties thrown by the networks to congratulate us on surviving another day of panels. (OK, and to promote their shows and stars.)

At last night's lavish Food Network event, we were introduced to this year's 'Next Iron Chef' hopefuls and got to sample their delights, but only the (TV) foodies in the crowd noticed that 'Top Chef' alum Ariane Duarte was assisting chef Amanda Freitag.

Here's one anonymous publicist's hilarious reaction:

"A 'Top Chef' contestant assisting an 'Iron Chef'? Seems like the right hierarchy to me! [Laughs]"

Here's a video game that promises to slice up the competition. A cut above. It will serve up a dish full of fun for gamers everywhere. It'll be... All right, you get it. Food cliches. Chop-chop. But, seriously, in a marriage between the Food Network and United Media, Iron Chef: America is coming to the home market. Destineer today announced plans to publish the video game Iron Chef America: Supreme Cuisine exclusively for the Wii system and Nintendo DS. It's based on the popular food network competition show, which in turn is based on the original Iron Chef in Japan, produced by Fuji Television.

A YouTube video featuring a "single frame" shot from a McDonald's ad in the middle of Food Network's Iron Chef has some convinced that the company is sneaking subliminal messages into the network's programming.

First of all, I think the offending image is more than one frame. It goes by quickly, but even at normal speed you can at least glimpse that something is there. Second, the practice of inserting one-frame ads goes back to the '50s when it was thought that such a gimmick would actually plant subliminal messages in people's brains. This was proved false almost as quickly when studies confirmed that the frames simply weren't long enough for anyone to truly register them.

I love the fact that they remembered to include the Bob Newhart episode "Over The River and Through The Woods," where the gang gets drunk on Thanksgiving night and try to order Chinese food over the phone ("More moo goo!"), and the choice of A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving and Bewitched are good choices. But I'll take exception to their choice of the Friends episode "The One Where Ross Got High." It's certainly a good episode, with the whole "Rachel makes a dessert" plot, but Friends was famous for its Turkey Day episodes, and "The One With All The Thanksgivings" is even better. It's the flashback episode where we see Ross and Chandler go to Ross' home for Thanksgiving and we meet fat Monica and then thin Monica a year later, when she accidentally cuts off part of Chandler's toe. That's hysterical.

Rather than have to handicap Ray's game, the Chairman will be pairing up both ladies with one of the Iron Chefs. De Laurentiis with Bobby Flay. Ray with Mario Batali.

Alright, the Chairman is actually doing all the fancy pairing because the Food Network told him to, but Ray would get trounced otherwise. Nothing against Miss 30-Minute Meals, but De Laurentiis has some serious skills care of Paris' Le Cordon Bleu and Wolfgang Puck.

Here's hoping the secret ingredient is the tears of failed homemakers.